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<blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7831848" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I think the issue is that a spear is unquestionably a simple weapon. Simple design, simple to make, simple to use, simple all around. And for game balance purposes, simple weapons generally need to be worse than martial weapons. If spears were better than swords at their baseline, it would significantly devalue martial weapon proficiency, because anyone with simple weapon proficiency can already be more effective with a spear.The simplest solution to this problem is to take some of the features that should realistically be inherent to the spear and lock them behind feats. Now anybody can use a spear, but it takes specialized training to use it to maximum effect. Is it realistic? Not really, but it’s decently well-balanced, and it’s not overly complex.The other solution would be to overhaul weapon design to account for different weapons being more or less useful in different contexts. But down that path lies the overly-complex weapon vs. weapon tables of Ye Olde D&amp;D, and at the end of the day it probably still won’t be all that realistic.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Charlaquin, post: 7831848, member: 6779196"] I think the issue is that a spear is unquestionably a simple weapon. Simple design, simple to make, simple to use, simple all around. And for game balance purposes, simple weapons generally need to be worse than martial weapons. If spears were better than swords at their baseline, it would significantly devalue martial weapon proficiency, because anyone with simple weapon proficiency can already be more effective with a spear. The simplest solution to this problem is to take some of the features that should realistically be inherent to the spear and lock them behind feats. Now anybody can use a spear, but it takes specialized training to use it to maximum effect. Is it realistic? Not really, but it’s decently well-balanced, and it’s not overly complex. The other solution would be to overhaul weapon design to account for different weapons being more or less useful in different contexts. But down that path lies the overly-complex weapon vs. weapon tables of Ye Olde D&D, and at the end of the day it probably still won’t be all that realistic. [/QUOTE]

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